A long time ago, I grew tired of explaining to conservative friends why a literal 6 day Creation belief based on Genesis 1-2 is irrational and, once you are familiar with the text, disrespectful to the original intent of the human authorship as well as its infallible divine origin. So I wrote this blog post to unpackage the chronology of the two Genesis accounts and explain that if taken literally, they contradict one another. So in order to avoid believing there are honest to goodness contradictions between the message the human authors of the Bible intended to communicate morally, historically, anologically and theologically, one must take the two accounts as analogically true.
Imagine my surprise when after referring a conservative Presbyterian friend to the blogpost, he started to say (1) I'm the one failing to give scripture its proper deference and (2) the two accounts in Genesis may be reconciled by taking into account that one or both have been altered in transmission from the original autograph (the first physical text) to the ones we have in front of us.
Well, if you don't see the problem with that, I probably can't help you. But consider that by attempting to defend a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-2 this way, you are losing far more (ability to trust that the meaning of the text of scripture is substantially unchanged) than you are gaining (ability to say God made the World in six literal days because a version of the Bible we don't have said so). How he knew what this lost text said, is a mystery to me, dear reader. But you see my frustration.
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